MY DAUGHTERS AND THE DOG

One of my daughters had a dear friend who lived just a few houses down the street and around the corner from our house.  They spent a lot of time together, much of it at her friend’s house, so much in fact that when her friend’s family went out of town for a few days, they asked my daughter to feed and water their large dog while they were gone.  Early one Sunday morning, while I was at the church, she took her younger sister with her to feed the dog.  This dog was kind and friendly, never exhibiting any aggressive behavior.  But on that morning, for some unknown reason, that changed.  As she bent over to put food in its dish, it bit her on the face and tore away about 25% of her upper lip and about 15% of her lower lip and a rounded portion of her cheek.  She immediately went into shock.  There was a gaping hole in the side of her face which was bleeding badly.  My younger daughter, displaying a maturity far beyond her tender years, took her older sister by the hand and led her to the next door neighbor’s house to get help.  I first became aware of this when I received a phone call from that neighbor informing me that I needed to come to their house as soon as possible because my daughter had been bitten by a dog.  This didn’t overly concern me.  I had been bitten several times as a boy on my paper route but always survived.  But when I arrived at the neighbor’s house, I sensed this wasn’t something I had experienced.  This wasn’t an ordinary dog bite.  When I saw her, my first thought was “will she ever be asked on a date”.  My heart broke for her.  I had someone assist me and we administered to her.  In the blessing she was promised that she would fully recover and there would be no significant remnant of the injury.  We then took her to the emergency room at the hospital.  They looked at her and told us they would have to call a plastic surgeon.  While waiting for the surgeon, I began to wonder if the blessing I’d given was the will of the Lord or the desires of a helpless father.  I decided to call the Stake President, Monte Maynard, and ask if he would come give her a blessing.  He was in the middle of Stake Presidency meeting but dropped what they were doing and came with his two counselors, President Glen Markus and President Hank (Henry) Nelson.  We were sitting in the little semi-private cubicle when I heard the emergency room doors open.  I looked in that direction and in walked the stake presidency.  As they walked through those doors, there was a radiating light that completely surrounded them.  At that moment, I knew my wounded daughter would be ok.  President Maynard acted as voice as we administered to her again.  The blessing was almost identical to the one I had pronounced earlier.  It was an additional witness that the Lord would bless her with everything she needed to heal.  The surgeon finally arrived.  After examining her, she told us that the damage was so serious that all she could presently do was clean the edges of the torn flesh, sew it shut, and wait a year for it to fully heal.  She indicated that after the year of healing, there would need to be a series of surgeries that would reshape her mouth and face.  We scheduled an appointment with her ten months in advance.  At the end of those ten months we returned to see the surgeon.  Upon examining her, the doctor was surprised at what she saw and marvelled at how incredibly effective the healing had been.  She said that my daughter wouldn’t need any additional surgery.  She indicated that there was nothing she could do to improve upon what she saw.  We were so grateful for the tender mercies of the Lord.  Today, decades later, if you didn’t know about the dog bite, you wouldn’t be able to tell that anything had happened.  In all of this, I think back to that morning and I’m so grateful her younger sister was with her, that she kept her composure and led her older sister to the immediate help she needed.  I am certain that the Lord is perfectly capable of healing every wound that afflicts any of us.  Many, if not most, of the wounds with which we are inflicted are not nearly as visible as was my daughter’s.  Some are hidden so deeply that only the person knows they exist.  But God knows and yearns for us to let Him heal us, to make us well and complete, with no blemish, visible or invisible, as if it had never happened.  May we all ultimately reach out to Him and ask for His infinite mercy.  It’s what He waits for us to do so that He can wipe away all our tears, take our burdens upon Himself, and make us whole.